The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) and New Jersey Transit Corporation (NJ TRANSIT) have prepared an Environmental Assessment (EA) and Draft Section 4(f) Evaluation and Appendices for the Raritan River Bridge Replacement. The document has been prepared in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969, Section 106, of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, Section 4(f) of the U.S. Department of Transportation Act of 1966, and all applicable regulations including: Council on Environmental Quality regulations at 40 CFR 1506.6; FTA regulations under 23 CFR 771.119(d); Executive Order 12898 on Environmental Justice; Executive Order 11988 on Floodplain Management; and U.S. DOT Order 5650.2 on Floodplain Management and Protection.

The document can be viewed here with its appendices here. The offical comment period for the EA/Draft Section 4(f) Evaluation is now closed. The public comment period ran from June 14, 2017, to July 14, 2017.

Following the close of the comment period, FTA will review the findings of the EA/Draft Section 4(f) Evaluation as well as the comments and responses and make a formal NEPA determination for the project. Public comments will be addressed in FTA’s NEPA determination.

About the Raritan River Bridge Replacement Project

The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) and New Jersey Transit Corporation (NJ TRANSIT) have prepared an Environmental Assessment (EA) and Draft Section 4(f) Evaluation for the Raritan River Bridge Replacement. Recognizing that bridge resiliency is essential to safe and reliable operations along the North Jersey Coast Line (NJCL), the Raritan River Bridge Replacement project will replace the existing swing bridge that carries NJ TRANSIT’s NJCL trains over the Raritan River between Perth Amboy, NJ, and South Amboy, NJ. The new bridge will be on an alignment adjacent to the existing bridge, which suffered damage in 2012 during Superstorm Sandy. Built in 1908, the Raritan River Bridge is the sole rail link for 17 of the 20 stations on the NJCL to the major job centers of Newark and Jersey City in New Jersey and the New York City borough of Manhattan. It carries almost 10,000 NJ TRANSIT customers daily and moves two million tons of freight annually via Conrail.